sneak peek: hidden kitchen

in new york there are sunday suppers, in baltimore it’s sometimes, and in paris you have hidden kitchen. it’s all part of this increasing trend towards intimate dinner parties where friends and strangers converge for a memorable meal. today’s sneak peek takes us into the parisian flat of laura adrian and braden perkins, the creators the private supper club, hidden kitchen. the two spend most of their time working as consultants for restaurants and food retail companies, but weekends allow them to invite 16 people into their home for creative, seasonal dinners. enjoy the setting where it all takes place, and click here for more images. {thanks laura and braden!} –anne

[above: I really wanted a lot of green when I looked out our windows, but my thumb is not at all green. Everything I planted out there turned brown! So I e-mailed Elain Jarvis of Jardins Jarvis and she came to look at our window boxes, assessed the amount of light, the amount of work i was willing to do and my taste. A few weeks later she showed up with window boxes already planted and fit for our mini-balconies. I am so happy with the result! ]

We love our apartment, but it’s not really ours. We are renting it and most of the furniture belongs to our landlord. We’ve added our personal touches where we could to make it our own. We originally chose the color “elephant breath” from farrow and ball to paint our salon, but decided we just couldn’t paint a room with a color with that name! Our painter, Barnaby, agreed and came up with this color of his own- we’ll call it barnaby’s breath! Originally, this room was floor to ceiling off-white so you couldn’t notice any of the molding. plus, it was just blah. Barnaby used a custard-y white on the trim and mirrors and did the ceiling and molding pure white to show off all it’s glory.

The single best thing about our apartment is that our Boston Terrier, Tatie, lives here! We are preparing for his 5th birthday party next month. Guests will wear black and white and all the food will be black and white too!

Hidden Kitchen. On the weekends, our salon magically turns into a dining room where were serve a ten-course meal to 16 hungry guests. For more info, head to our website: www.hkmenus.com.

CLICK HERE for the rest of the hidden kitchen sneak peek after the jump!

The first thing I purchased, even before moving in, was that amazing crystal chandelier. I just happened to see it in a window of an antique shop in the village Saint Paul in the 4eme arrondissement. It replaced a hideous brass number similar to the one that still exists in our dining room! Always something on the list…

The only parts of this room that were influenced by us are the curtains and the new coat of paint. Okay, and all the booze. Curtains, as well as pretty much everything, are insanely expensive here in Paris. So I found these online at Anthropologie and brought them back from the states during a family visit. The paint here is Farrow and Ball by the name of Dauphin. I love that it almost looks like leather!

Braden has a joke that he collects plates the same way I collect shoes. Sadly, it’s quite true. And the same goes for cookbooks. Even though he never follows recipes, he loves to look through cookbooks for inspiration.

We got these lamps at the most amazing store in the Marais, Les Milles Feuilles. The lamps were expensive enough and then when we saw the price of the shades, we almost fainted. So we compromised by getting the lamp bases there and heading to Ikea for the shades at 10€ a pop. Not bad, huh?

I got to see this apartment in person at one of their dinners in December. It was a great experience, which I would recommend to everyone planning a trip to Paris (but good luck getting a spot since I think their requests for a spot at one of their dinners exploded after they were written up in the NYT). Their kitchen is large for Paris, but small for most of the US.

i love the touch of the julia childs cookbook! xx
my flat in london is also rented and i wish we could change features such as the light fittings!.. it was an ordeal to even get our landlord to let us paint!

I did a secret supper in South America a few years ago. Such a wonderful experience. I highly recommend looking into it – for your own city but esp when you go on vacation. What a great way to get to do something intimate in a place that you aren’t really intimate with.

Anyway, great place. You’re lucky I didn’t see that chandelier first. I fell in love with it immediately.

I love the place -very intimate and a subtile choice of colours, furniture and bibelots (typically french) Without offending anyone, I rather prefer a chandelier in Murano glass from Venice instead to enhance the place with a touch of happy colours.

I love this….all of this. The design, the plate collection (those square lifted bowls are beautiful), the plants (I also have a brown thumb) and most of all the hidden kitchen idea. It’s fantastic and I really appreciate the desire to have intimate time with friends.

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